Life Coaching Compared to Mentoring or Counseling

Life coaching, in essence, is having the ability to empower other people. Many people are natural life coaches and try to inspire everyone they're around. Other people become certified to make it their life's work.

To set up a life coaching practice, you need to be certified in most states. But let's get back to what life coaching really is and what life coaches do.

A life coach's goal is to help their client meet and/or exceed their goals by helping the client to build momentum, stay focused and move on to the next goal. They show their clients various ways to get things done.

A life coach also strives to raise the awareness of their client. They do this by asking questions that provoke thought. They challenge the client with more advanced questioning as they get further into a session or a client/coach relationship.

A life coach helps their clients discover their gifts and talents and finds ways to bring those out. A life coach needs to be intuitive and responsive when guiding a client to see the value in their own unique gifts.

Life coaching is always about the client and never about the coach. It's about looking beyond what a client may say and discovering what they really need and then giving them the power to succeed in whatever area the client is seeking assistance with.

Life coaching is not the same thing as consulting. Consultants generally tell people what to do in certain situations and do not offer motivation. A life coach is a motivator and helps the client reveal their own solutions.

Life coaches offer advice, but they do so in ways that give the clients several options.

Life coaching is similar to mentoring but a life coach works with a wider array of areas, whereas a mentor usually works in a few select areas. Mentors are usually experts in their field. Life coaches have a wide variety of skills they pull from but do not consider themselves a true expert in them.

Life coaching is not counseling. To counsel someone you generally need a license by an accredited facility. People who need counseling have deeper issues than a life coach can provide. Many life coaches will refer clients to counselors if the client's issues are beyond their scope of abilities.

The same thing can be said for therapy and therapist when compared to life coaching, but a therapist often goes even deeper into a person's problems than a counselor does.

Life coaching offers clients some forms of critiquing in helping the client to discover what holds them back, why they can't reach goals, etc. They also give guidance.

Life coaching is a proactive approach to helping people take the necessary steps to improve themselves.

Resource: Life Coaching Certified/Statbrook Associates